A modern chiplet design uses a 4x4 2D-Mesh Network-on-Chip (NoC) with XY Dimension-Order Routing. Each router hop takes exactly 1 clock cycle to traverse. If a data packet originates at coordinates (0,0) and needs to reach a memory controller at (3,3), how many clock cycles will the network traversal take, assuming zero network congestion?
In a 2D Mesh NoC using XY routing:
First move in the X direction
Then move in the Y direction
Source: (0,0)
Destination: (3,3)
Number of hops required:
X movement: 3−0=3 hops
Y movement: 3−0=3 hops
Total hops:
3+3=6
Since each router hop takes 1 clock cycle:
Traversal latency=6 clock cycles
So, the packet takes 6 clock cycles to reach the destination.
